Chris24601

Only issue here is I already have four other pools; flight, stealth, sorcery, and leadership… flight (for hover’s improved control) and sorcery (for everything but flight… Singularity with a ward and dropping fire on everything it pulls in is life) are no goes, so it’s either lose invisibility or that extra bit of damage, defense and +recharging from a LotG* just to fix a coding problem. * gun to my head it’s leadership that goes bye… but man I’d love to trade my ancillary pool for a fifth regular pool and fixing the damnable pathing would make that an unnecessary choice.

I’m not opposed to the concept, but I suspect the leaderboard holo is an adaptation of the holostatue from the Number Six arc, which is itself an adaptation of the doppelgänger system. What that means is that the statue can’t be locked down to a single image like you’re hoping. Rather, it would re-check the appearance from the player’s current character when the instance loads. I’d love to be able to drop copies of my other toons into my base in addition to my civilians, but I suspect the technology limitations of base instances makes that impractical.

Praetoria was always intended to just be an alternate start, not a completely alternate path. Honestly, there are times I think allowing access to First Ward without having to first go to Primal Earth was a design mistake. First Ward being accessible from Praetoria and it being followed by Night Ward for another 5 levels of content gave people the impression that it could make sense for them to still be a loyalist or resistance until the end of time. They ignore that the First Ward arc has both Scott’s resistance and Cole’s loyalists openly hostile to you during the arc for abandoning the respective cause. The final arcs of Neutropolis are all about putting your character where the only sensible next step is to go on to Primal Earth and your inclination towards heroism or villainy (and soon enough vigilante or rogue if it suits) should be obvious from your final moral choices there. In completing those arcs… you have chosen some combination of heroism, duty or self-interest that makes staying in what anyone can tell is a regime on the verge of collapse not a logical course. If you care about Praetoria from either faction you need to leave… prove that Praetorians can be heroes to to the people of Primal Earth. If you don’t care about Praetoria you should be happy for a way off the sinking ship and into the Rogue Isles. “I care about my home too much to leave” is like a WW2 soldier ignoring their orders to go fight in Europe or the Pacific while claiming you’re first concern is your home. Good for you. You’ve deserted. You are no longer a member of the Resistance or the Loyalists. You had a mission, soldier, and you refused it. And the game supports this… if you go to First Ward you’re treated as an outsider to both factions. Honestly? The REAL solution to all this is that, if you’re still a Praetorian alignment when you click the door to First Ward your alignment immediately flips to Rogue (since you’re choosing your interests over following orders from the leaders of the Praetorian factions). That would fit the lore. If you aren’t going to Primal Earth when the mission comes up, then you’re AWOL from whichever faction you held loyalty to. You’re still a Praetorian; all Praetorians keep their specialized level-up badges regardless of what alignment button they’re wearing; but you’re not aligned with either the Resistance or the Loyaltists if you don’t follow orders.

You're projecting I think. No one said they want fascists to sound cool. But I do want them to sound like they've been living on Primal Earth for the past several decades and not imported from Worst Timeline Earth yesterday.

I definitely think the multitude of First/Night Ward contacts could be curtailed down to just the Doorman and the repeatables (Night Ward really needs First Ward for context in story arc proper*). The reason Find Contact is so very lopsided is largely because of when it was added on Live and the idea that it was a “best foot forward” list of the newest and more detailed content, particularly as Live was pushing into making 1-50 something to power through to get you to the grindy iTrials. That’s why it’s prioritized on the Shining Stars “tutorial as storyarc” and included the “powerset advertisement” arcs before shooting you over to Praetoria’s outskirts which took full advantage of the graphical improvements since the early content (compare the detail of the ruined buildings in First Ward to the i0 hazard zones… compare Imperial City to Steel Canyon**). Atlas got a huge graphical upgrade with the launch of Freedom. They were working on graphics updates to King’s Row (which didn’t need much since it was meant to be drab, but see the upgraded Skulls) and the new arcs there (which I suspect were meant to be part one of a larger story BaBs was left on a cliffhanger essentially… the Skull leader and his sister were still on the loose) ran up to level 20. So did the Shining Stars (which spends a good chunk in Atlas and Kings and a lot of time indoors in Steel). The find contact system will point you at the Faultline arcs (15-25) which are notably improved in appearance and mission structure compared to i0 content (and unlock Oroboros). The Midnight Squad intro arc is also on the list. The first part of your doppelgänger arc runs mostly through Faultline as well… also on the find contact list. First Ward + Night Ward though ran effectively 20-35… skipping you past a lot of the older, less pretty and old grindy content until the tail end of the i0 content where, low and behold, the New Praetorians arc happily sits (that sends you on fairly instanced missions). 35+ is when the Vanguard arcs kick off. Improved quality over i0 and a co-op zone like First/Night Ward were. This is also where, had it not been shutdown, Kallisti Wharf would have come in, diverting you from the old 40-50 content of the dated Peregrine and just ugly Grandville to a beautiful new zone with Heroes on one side and villains on the other (where the post-war hero and villain content could have continued in what the live devs had on the storyboard for i25+), meeting in the middle for post-Praetoria incarnate content. So, viewed from that lens, the find contact system made perfect sense for the live for-profit game. It does NOT make sense for the semi-archival non-profit game that is Homecoming. The goal here isn’t so much “new shiny” it’s “greatest hits.” And that’s what the Find Contacts button should send you to… the contacts with those “greatest hits” story arcs and missions (prioritized for handing those out). * Note: given that many of the major factions of First Ward have versions that extend up to level 35 (and the Night Ward ones via repeatables at least to 40) I think that extending the First Ward arcs all the way to 35 and Night Ward up to 40 wouldn’t be a horrible idea). ** Note the Second: It would be a fairly big project, but I would love to see some beautification of Steel Canyon via some building swaps with the newer Imperial City buildings… with an emphasis on using the glass and steel skyscrapers to replace the brutalist tiny-windowed concrete masses that are there now. The outskirts are pretty much fine, but the core should be renamed Concrete Canyon with its present look.

The biggest issue I have with the writing is that “present-day politics” and speech patterns ages like milk sitting on a summer porch. It’s not going to be timeless, it’s going to feel painfully dated in just a few years. In terms of fictional writing, particularly in a world with alternate history, sticking to more settled historical and setting-specific references is a good way to keep the world feeling timeless.

I definitely agree. City of Heroes is an alternate Earth where history has been headed a different direction for decades if not centuries. The Earth was invaded by what the general public still generally believes to be ALIENS in the very early 00s that ravaged huge chunks of at least the city if not the planet. The Shadow Shard exists because Rularuu almost ate the whole dimension (and the spell that created it yoinked s copy of an entire chunk of the city and its people with it. It got invaded by another Dimension recently. Galaxy City is just the latest nuking from space to hit. Supervillains routinely override broadcast television (which along with cathode ray tube sets and monitors are still things in Paragon City) with their manifestos. The Sky Raiders are a breakaway US military organization that was already equipped with jet packs, teleporter rigs, and shield generators. Malta is a shadow government organization armed with brainwashed cyborg war machines, and also has jet packs, sapper guns, teleporters, and an army of magic-empowered female assassins. And that’s BEFORE they snagged Battle Maiden’s nanotech to upgrade themselves. Heck, you have gangs empowered by demons and death gods, puppets animated city wide by the telekinetic power of a psychic’s brain in a jar, and frankenstein-ish animated cadavers running around as STARTER villains. Real world 2020s pop culture is just so… banal in comparison to the utter insanity that is Paragon City.

Also worth noting is that when I played it on Beta just before shutdown the arcs had an upper ceiling of 39 as well. My suspicion is that, had it not gone into shutdown, placing that arc in the 30-39 range was part of an overall revamp where they were creating a new game path that was intended to work in line the Signature Story Arcs and overall rush to 50 for grindy Post Praetoria War Incarnate content. Basically, had it gone onwards, I believed new players would have been expected to start in Galaxy City tutorial zone, then played through the chain that starts with Habashy in Atlas, then the Shining Stars missions and new Kings Row arcs (which weren’t complete… I suspect there would have eventually been at least a third arc continuing that story). That gets you to the range where the first signature story arc begins and a number of what I call the “advertisement arcs” show up (you know… like one where you have to help the museum curator with the Tsoo problem and throughout it face overtuned opponents with the power sets then only available for unlock in the Paragon Point Shop… they’re so cool and you can buy them for yourself). You also get your doppelgänger arc, the Roy Cooling arc about upgrading the mediporters in that spread, and First Ward (and then Night Ward) as the first non-Praetorian access to Praetoria. New Praetorians would have slotted In right after that with the idea that new toons were doing things in First/Night Ward while the bulk of the Praetorian War was happening and now here are a bunch of characters from First Ward in the refugee compound and even the trainer from there on your team. Had it not been shut down I’m sure a follow-up 40-50 arc and zone (probably what Kallisti Wharf was originally being built for) that set up where Incarnate content was expected to be in terms of additional post-war iTrials would have been the i25 content (corresponding with the first post-Praetoria iTrial). In that sense it would have served as a completely alternate path featuring many arcs with newer mechanics and overall better graphics. You could still play the older stuff of course, but the live game wouldn’t have guided you off the new rails… it’d be something you had to go looking for. However, because of the shutdown a whole bunch of bits were left half-finished and so arcs like the New Praetorians feel out of place… though the option now to progress to the finally realized Kallisti Wharf instead of to Peregrine and the Portal Corps arcs now allows something much closer to what would have been the planned live experience of just bypassing the Praetorian War entirely.

The biggest disconnect in the Goldside experience right now is, frankly, the i24 New Praetorian and associated RedSide arcs which unlock at 30 and yet in terms of timing occur absolutely after all the 40-50 portal corps arcs and the Incarnate TFs, iTrials, Dark Astoria, and Belladonna and Number Six arcs. My suggestion would be just a flat-out reordering of the Praetorian-related content. Leave the iTrials as they are, but do the following. - Move the portal exit point for leaving Praetoria for Goldsiders from some empty warehouse in Paragon/the Isles to the Vanguard base in the RWZ. - Move Tina Macintyre to the Vanguard base, and make her a contact for all factions with a level range of 35+. Move any non-portal missions that were on Peregrine Island to the Vanguard portal room. - Tina introduces Maria Jenkins who is also in the Vanguard base and coded 40+. - Maria introduces a contact level 45+ that offers a single-player non-incarnate scaled story arc version of the Praetorian iTrials (skipping Dilemma Diabolique) up to just before the Magisterium trial. - That contact introduces Belladonna’s arc rescaled to level 45+ and adding a single-player version of the Magisterium trial for its finale. - That contact introduces either Marchand or the Mr. G arc depending on alignment, but now at 45+. - Leave Number Six as Incarnate content. This creates a fairly clear path of the original Praetorian content (1-20) > First Ward (20-29), Night Ward (30-34), Tina (35+), Maria (40+), solo Praetorian War (45+), Belladonna (45+), New Praetorians/Mr. G (45+) and Number Six (50) as the complete story of Praetoria that a Praetorian could experience basically in order.

It’s been awhile but if I recall they aggro on anyone who attacks their respective giant monster. So once a 50 starts in, the guys actually doing the TF get nuked by sprockets hitting them harder than the monster can.

I always take hover/flight so I don’t see that animation. With flight it’s much less 90s dance dance revolution.

If they were even to consider going voiced, I’d say instead of AI the community could donate their own voice work to the project. Homecoming is entirely supported by volunteer player donations. Doing some volunteer voice work would just be a different way to show support. It would be a LOT of work though and really increase the size of CoH on the hard drive, so I don’t think it’s a particularly good investment of Homecoming’s resources. But if they were to do it, players volunteering their voices would be the way to go.

Why not just have them dropped into the pool automatically on arrival? Still have a 1 minute pulsing repel on the exit, but that way they’d have to choose to go over to the exit in the first place, which would diminish the clog up all on its own.

I’ve played Montegue’s arc enough at different levels to know that the reason there are no higher level Lost is the eventually transition into full Rikti. Another point in the Skull’s power up favor is that their leaders actually turn up as part of an objective in New Praetorians arc (you have to destroy an artifact that makes them invulnerable so other Praetorians can take them down somewhere else). That arc was originally 35-40 in the open beta just before the original run got shuttered (bumped to 35-50 on Homecoming), but the point stands that the leaders were tough enough to give named NPCs from incarnate tier content trouble. An easy explanation would be that since the power they have is essentially feeding on death (so sorta mini-Mots) maybe they could have had some ritual to absorb all the deaths that occurred in the fall of Praetoria. And that’s also why you don’t see them at all from low levels until the levels when the Praetorian War start happening. They needed all that death to get the power-up.

Honestly? I’d settle for just letting custom AE opponents scale up to Minotaur/Cyclops scale… having had to do some art with even relatively small giants (c. 9-10 feet tall), it’s interesting how little extra height is needed to make someone feel massive compared to a normal person. For reference, 10 feet vs. 6 feet is proportional to a full grown adult and a four year old child. Add some extra bulk to the 10 foot humanoid and it’s pretty easy to have them be ten times the volume of an adult human (and weighing nearly a ton). I don’t think you’d need to go all the way to Great Monster size to achieve the feeling of massiveness the OP desires. Just 12-15 feet tall would make even the largest player model feel like a hobbit.

To be fair, insider trading and maybe a good ponzy scheme would be way more villainous than half the stuff you get up to Red-side.

Not just you. It’s here, so I consider it a capstone for my toons to at least get the Alpha slot level shift, but if it had my druthers I’d have left it at the 50 cap and just added the Incarnate missions as just fun content to play.

Honestly, ever since Dragon Age: Origins and the SWTOR mmo I just find it fun to have a companion NPC/sidekick along. Comics are rife with sidekicks; heck, in universe most of Ms. Liberty’s Vindicators are sidekicks. So long as the sidekick doesn’t exceed the value of an equivalent power(s) the only difficulty I see with this would be in getting the costuming to work. I know another server managed custom costumes for MM pets at the cost of costume slots. That approach was largely deemed too costly (you needed six slots), but might be revisitible for an APP that required only one (and did not necessarily even lock you out of that one… the power customization option would just be for which costume slot to reference). Along a similar vein for selling the concept; what if the summon was literally a weaker mirror self, akin to the clones and doppelgängers introduced in some mid-20’s arcs and showing up in some of the morality missions? The default APP would be pulling an alternate you from another dimension. Power Customization would be for which costume slot to use (default is your current costume) so that those who want to can make them look completely different if they want, but those who want every costume slot aren’t put out. This would have a practical limit of the mirror self always using a subset of your powers, but that’s a fairly common comic trope anyway. Robin isn’t a mutant with fire powers, Kid Flash isn’t a super strong brute, Supergirl isn’t a psychokinetic puddle of pink protoplasm (at least not since that weird time in the 90’s we all ignore). It wouldn’t do everything the OP wants, but I think that would be an easier sell… particularly if, instead of a power pool, it was associated with a Portal Corps-related badge or accolade (existing or new) you could earn.

So, in terms of refunds… isn’t this just a back door to allowing intra-account shifting of Incarnate stuff? Respec it down to as many Emps as possible, mail those to another of your toons and rebuild whatever powers you want without having to go through earning the Emps on that toon. I already have enough Emps banked from the toons I enjoy doing incarnate stuff on that I can get at least all my T3s on any toon as soon as I unlock each slot. All this would do is mean I could yoink even more Emps from toons that are basically parked and get my active toons T4’d even faster.

Of note, we already semi- have an AT with a similar concept of melee/range mix + armor; Peacebringers (and Warshades to a slightly lesser degree) so looking at their strengths and weaknesses would provide some insights into what this AT would need.

That said, I do want to see something other than the existing zone events simply because my connection can’t keep up with more than a league’s worth of players spamming massive FX porn in a concentrated area. If I don’t have a toon with a PBAoE like Spin to accidentally hit something and thereby give me a target, everything dies before my Internet will even let me target anything. Some sort of events where you have to spread out more would be greatly appreciated.

I was around for it. Ragdolling almost feels like it was a fad given I don’t see it in newer MMOs (ex. SWTOR) and wouldn’t mind at all it they just went back to the old fixed death animations. The number of times that would look weird (ex. dies on a slope) is dwarfed by the number of times the ragdoll rolls into some horrible shape that could only be explained by all PCs having the super power of turning skeletons to jelly. Also notable are the mobs who expressly don’t ragdoll (players and the Croatoa natives most memorably) and look absolutely fine. So yeah, I think the look of the game would be overall improved if ragdolling were just turned off entirely.

Honestly, if the damage didn’t fall off so extremely at level 10 they’d be fine as is.

Euraka! That’s the justification for the damage aura (which needs to be toxic). But the kicker is… it damages your allies not enemies. Regeneration - so bad it kills your allies too.

Not everyone wants to be proc-ing damage on everything around us all the time. That’s why we pick sets that don’t do that.